Transcript No Slide Title

Arthur Miller
1915-2005
Arthur Miller- The Early Years
• 1915 Arthur Aster Miller was born on October 17th in
New York City.
• 1920-28 Attends Public School #24 in Harlem.
• 1923 Sees first play--a melodrama at the Schubert
Theater.
• 1929 Father's business fails and family moves to
Brooklyn.
Early Years continued
• 1932 Graduates from Abraham Lincoln High School.
Registers for night school at City College, but quits after
two weeks.
• 1934-35 University of Michigan, studies journalism.
Reporter and night editor on student paper, The Michigan
Daily.
• 1940 Marries Mary Grace Slattery.
• 1944 Daughter, Jane, is born.
• Son, Robert, is born.
Arthur Miller and Marilyn
Monroe
• 1950 Meets Marilyn
Monroe for the first
time.
• 1956 Moves to Nevada
for six weeks in order to
divorce Mary Slattery
(after 10 years of
marriage).
• Marries Marilyn
Monroe.
• While Miller is married
to Monroe, he writes
nothing for the theater.
•John Huston, the film’s
director, wrote in his
memoir:
“One evening I was about to
drive away from the locationmiles out in the desert- when I
saw Arthur standing alone.
Marilyn and her friends hadn’t
offered him a ride back; they’d
just left him. If I hadn’t
happened to see him, he would
have been stranded out there.
My sympathies were more and
more with him.”
HUAC and Senator McCarthy
-The House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) was set up in 1938
to investigate communists within
federal government.
-In 1947 it turned its attention to the
arts. A group of writers, directors and
actors known as the Hollywood Ten
were convicted of contempt of
Congress for refusing to answer
questions about their political beliefs.
-They were blacklisted by Hollywood
and over the course of the next 10 years
some 320 people were barred from
work in the film studios over their
alleged membership of the Communist
party.
Miller and HUAC
• Miller was distressed by the sight of former friends
giving evidence against other former friends as a result
of McCarthyism.
• He writes a play about this situation, called The
Crucible. It is an allegory for McCarthyism.
• 1953- The Crucible premiers and receives many
awards.
• Miller is asked to attend the Belgian premier of The
Crucible, but cannot because he is denied a passport by
the US.
• 1957 -Miller is convicted of contempt of Congress for
refusing to name names to the House Un-American
Activities Committee.
• 1958- United States Court of Appeals overturns his
contempt conviction.
Miller’s Later Years
•1961 Divorces Marilyn Monroe.
•1962 Marries Inge Morath. Marilyn
Monroe dies.
•1963 Daughter, Rebecca, is born
•Miller becomes a delegate at a meeting of
Soviet and American writers in Lithuania,
where he tries to persuade the Soviets to stop
persecuting writers.
Miller’s Later Years cont.
• 2000 - There are major 85th birthday celebrations for
Miller held at University of Michigan and at the Arthur
Miller Center at UEA, England.
• Echoes Down the Corridor is published (collected essays
from 1944-2000).
• 2002 New York City revivals of The Man Who Had All
the Luck and The Crucible.
Television Movie -1996
Starring
Daniel Day-Lewis as John
Proctor
and
Winona Ryder as Abigail
Williams
A street in New York City's theater district is named "Arthur Miller Way.”
(W. 49th Street between Broadway and Eighth Ave)
“If I could only park my car there. But I can't.”
-Arthur Miller
Death of a Playwright
• Arthur Miller died in May 2005 of heart
failure at his home is Roxbury, Connecticut.
• He was 89 years old.